Base Training Basics

The right base phase leads to resplendent racing

In the first month of 1996, on the eve of the Atlanta Olympic Games, Bob Kennedy moved from his home and training camp in Indiana to Melbourne, Australia, to begin working with the British agent and coach Kim McDonald. Kennedy joined a group of McDonald athletes that included Daniel Komen, Moses Kiptanui, and American miler Steve Holman.

Later that summer, Kiptanui would finish second in the Olympic steeplechase, and Komen, of course, set a world record for 3,000m, 7:20.76, that stands to this day.

"From my senior year of college, which was in 1992, and for the next couple years, I was kind of an 85- to 95-mile-a-week person," Kennedy says. "And I went down there and I started running 110, 115 miles a week, and that summer is when I broke all those records."

August of 1996 would be the best month of Kennedy's career. He ran 12:58.21 for 5,000m and 7:31.65 for 3,000m, both new American records, and became the first non-African to break 13:00 for 5,000m. In Atlanta, he finished sixth in the 5,000m after launching a brazen surge into first place with 800 meters to go. His success that summer was the product of more than just a good winter of training in Melbourne -- he had been running at a world-class level for years, and was talented in a way that few Americans have ever been, before or since -- but he believes that the base he built through the small months of 1996 enabled his breakthrough. "I just felt like I brought my cardiovascular ability and capacity to a whole new level," he says.

Kennedy didn't reinvent the wheel, and neither should other runners hoping to move their training and racing to that new level, world class or otherwise. But his example is instructive, and it highlights what is perhaps the most fundamental element of proper distance training -- a well-executed base phase. By providing a solid foundation of aerobic running early in a training cycle, the right base phase can be the difference between an "OK" season and a season of consistent, high-level running. That is to say, the difference between good running and great running.

So, what does a well-executed base phase look like?

Simple But Not Easy

Building a base is relatively simple. Legendary New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard famously prescribed high mileage for all of his athletes, from half-milers to marathoners, and they took the world of running by storm in the 1960s. The base was Lydiard's great and revelatory contribution to the art of coaching, and we do well to remember it.

Still, in the years since Lydiard ruled, athletes and coaches have tweaked and revised some aspects of the base. Today we know that plenty of aerobic mileage will reward runners as they head into specific stages of training, and later into the racing season, but we also know that the base isn't just about running 100 miles a week and drinking beer. (Lydiard was an advocate of that, too.)

According to former Olympic marathoner Jenny Spangler, the base phase serves two purposes. The first and most important is creating aerobic strength. But for the athletes she coaches in the Chicago area, Spangler also stresses the value of incorporating light speed work, strides and weight training into the base.

"Definitely a long time ago, when you talked about base training it was just putting in the distance," she says. Now, she thinks it's a mistake to avoid harder running one or two days a week. "For me, base training is to get yourself physiologically, and actually mentally and emotionally, ready to go to the next step, which would be more speed-type work and harder running. If you go from regular mileage all the time to all of a sudden, 'lets get on the track,' you're more prone to injury, and I don't think you can get as much out of yourself."

Spangler recommends weekly hill and fartlek workouts, plus incorporating strides two days a week after an easy run. (See "Sample Base Camp" at the end of the next page.) Fartlek in particular allows you to focus on feel rather than time at a juncture in your training when hitting specific splits can be counterproductive. "I try to get people to run more by effort and throw away their watches," she says.

Kennedy, who spent most of his career running the 5,000m, took a similar approach to his base. "There are three basic phases to a training cycle," he says. "Base, strength, and speed. The problem that most athletes have is that they think [the phases] are mutually exclusive. I think that the phase of training is defined by what you are focusing on during that phase. But you always do a little of all of those things. There's never a time of year when you're just running mileage or you're just doing speed. You're always doing all of it, it's just a matter of to what degree." (When Kennedy speaks about strength he generally means threshold work -- tempos, progression runs, and the like.)

Kennedy's most successful base phases, then, emphasized mileage. When he was preparing for outdoor track as a professional, this phase might begin in mid-December after a post-summer break and last all the way into early March. During these months he would run the highest mileage of his year, usually between 105 and 120 miles a week, with doubles six days a week and a two-hour long run. Starting in December he would also do a weekly threshold run and one interval session, though the intervals were "threshold" intervals, meaning much slower than his 5K race pace. Like Spangler, he incorporated strides after easy runs. By late January and early February, Kennedy would begin touching on 5K race pace, but threshold workouts still predominated.

Benefits of Base

Kennedy thinks that this phase allowed him to work harder as the year went on. "The most important facet of a training program is recovery, in my opinion," he says. "And so the more recovered you are, the better your body will be at adapting and being faster and stronger." By increasing his body's capacity to pump blood, Kennedy not only raised his aerobic threshold in the base phase, he also increased his ability to translate a hard workout into fitness down the road. "A great base allows you to have slightly faster recovery when you're really into it, and that's huge," Kennedy says.

Kennedy, a 5,000m man, and Spangler, a marathoner, agree philosophically about the base phase. They agree that mileage is important but that a well-rounded phase incorporates some faster running. Practically, though, Kennedy leaned more in the direction of threshold work for his harder efforts, and Spangler tends to put more hills and fartlek on the schedule. Where you should fall on that spectrum depends on your goal races, some experimenting, and, frankly, what type of training you most enjoy. That is, if a tempo run is more tempting than 2-minute pick-ups on a cold February morning when your peak races are months away, then have at the tempo run.

Even so, seven-time U.S. champion Alan Culpepper structured his base to include little planned hard running, which is why the point about experimentation and individualization is so important. Unlike Kennedy and Spangler, Culpepper devoted his early base just to running, followed by a transition period of once-a-week easy workouts. What should a careful reader make of all this?

Culpepper lives outside of Boulder, Colo., and is careful to point out that his advice is specific to altitude. "At altitude it's just very easy to overdo it," he says. "Being at altitude all year round made for a different base phase than if you're at sea level or go to altitude just for different periods." He found that a six-week block of solid mileage, with a long run and a medium long run mid-week, allowed him to gain strength before restarting workouts. The once-a-week workout phase also lasted up to six weeks, after which his base followed a more traditional course, like what Kennedy and Spangler describe. Regardless, he says, "the key is to have nice consistent training."

Mileage Matters

All three agree that the base is the time of year to push the envelope a little bit. Unless you're coming off injury or have had repeated bouts of overtraining, aim to gradually increase your mileage during each successive base phase. And because volume, not workouts, is the focus, it's even fine to accumulate some fatigue in your legs that you would normally try to avoid during more race-specific stages of training.

"During those days from December to March, I spent most of those days tired," Kennedy says. "I would start interval workouts tired, and that's OK." Of course, there's a fine line between tired and injured, and it takes practice to find that line. While navigating the accumulated fatigue of base training, Kennedy was particularly fond of progression runs -- runs that began slowly and gradually increased in speed. "This might be tricky to write about, and it's always tricky to try to explain to people, but I wanted to run as fast as I could and still recover," Kennedy says. These progression runs, which are a Kenyan specialty, allowed his tired body to work into a decent pace on its own terms, as opposed to, say, launching into a tempo run after a 20-minute warm-up regardless of how he felt.

For Culpepper, at altitude, pushing the envelope was also about mileage. "I always cycled it through four-week cycles," he says. "I would do three weeks of good volume, my highest volume, and then a down week. The down week, I would take out all my second runs and keep everything else the same, so I'd just run once a day."

Each year until late in his career, Culpepper tried to raise the peak mileage in his "up" weeks by five miles, eventually topping out in the 120-mile-a-week range, and a little more if he was training for a marathon. Otherwise, though, Culpepper's pre-marathon base phases were similar to the ones he put in while preparing for a season on the track. "For me, it didn't change a ton. As far as that 12- or 14- or 15-week block of what I considered my every-year base phase, it really didn't change much depending on what I was getting ready for."

Base Basics

Because every runner is different, every base is different. Nevertheless, here are some basic principles to use in constructing yours:

* First, volume is key. How much varies tremendously, so be your own guide. If you've never run more than 60 or 70 miles a week, shooting for 100 is probably irresponsible, even if that volume worked for Bob Kennedy back in 1996. It's much more important to gradually adapt your body to a new mileage maximum.

* Second, don't neglect hard running, unless you're at altitude or have another stimulus that wears your body down. For some, that stimulus could even be heat. Ideally, however, a good base includes a moderate amount of hard running. It can take the form of threshold work, or hill and fartlek work, or a mix. Either way, because these workouts are not the focus of the segment, they shouldn't be all-out efforts. Also remember that this isn't the best time of year to race, but if you do, don't expect much -- a proper base phase should leave you pretty tired.

* Shoot for a weekly long run, and try for a solid pace on most of your other runs. Kennedy liked progression runs, and Culpepper found that with the absence of structured workouts, easy mileage didn't get the job done. "You either have to run a lot, or you have to run somewhat briskly. You can't just run as easily as you want every single day," Culpepper says.

* Lastly, incorporate strides after a couple of easy runs each week. Older athletes will especially benefit from these quick, short bursts of speed. "I'm a masters runner now," Spangler says, "and they say that as a masters runner, you tend to keep your aerobic fitness pretty well, but you lose your speed and your power as you get older." Even in his no-workout phase, Culpepper did strides, and sometimes very short hills for an extra pop.

But remember the fundamental insight, Arthur Lydiard's great contribution, that distance running is an aerobic sport and that the best way to build aerobic strength is through steady, aerobic running, not by racing, blasting 200s, or grinding out race-pace kilometers. "Just keep building those aerobic enzymes, year after year after year," Culpepper says. "You have to put in a good solid block of just training, where you're not racing, where you're not running workouts, where you're just running a lot and your body is getting used to running a lot and recovering. That comes from running long runs and running good mileage -- week after week after week."

"Running is a continuum," Kennedy says. "It builds on itself. And it doesn't build on itself just from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, it builds on itself over years. The reality is, the more you can do, the better you will be. Within reason -- there's the balance of injury and illness and overtraining, and that kind of stuff. But up to that point, the more you can do, the better you can be."

Sample Base Camp

Putting together sample base training "is a bit difficult," coach and former Olympic marathoner Jenny Spangler says, "because so much depends on the level of the athlete and the reason they are in this base phase." Unless you're coming off an injury or otherwise first need to get back to regular easy running, Spangler recommends two workouts a week, strides, and strength work, either in the form of weights or circuit training.

Friday: Cross-training or an easy run with strides, and strength work.

Saturday: Long run.

Sunday: Off or easy run.

Spangler often has her athletes alternate weekly fartlek workouts and hill workouts. As the base phase progresses, she recommends increasing the length of the workouts on Tuesday and Thursday, and the long run on Saturday. Advanced runners, with sufficient time, will want to consider adding easy runs to the schedule in the morning or afternoon to bolster their total volume, as well as adding a run on Sunday.